Thursday 30 December 2010

Front cover planning:


I have stumbled upon an album cover, by Franz Ferdinand; a band which are iconic of the indie rock genre. From the above album cover, I have taken inspiration, as I aim to achieve a replication of sorts, just like The Clash's London Calling album which pays homage to Elvis Presley's debut. This idea will fit as the album name for my band is going to be 'Call Out', which is a song taken from the album in real life. I will also be taking note at the lack of an album name on the front cover, which is unconventional, perhaps in this case on purpose. Furthermore, the institution is displayed clearly at the bottom right of the cover - again this is unconventional as the institutions are usually displayed on the back and/or in the booklet (if any). The band also don't appear on the front cover, which isn't conventional of a mainstream front cover (the band aren't completely mainstream as they are categorised in the indie genre, an unpopular genre among the masses). The same goes for mine; it won't feature an image of the artist on the front cover, differentiating my media product from mainstream products. Unlike the above cover, which doesn't feature the album name, mine will. My original plan was to not put the album title on the cover, to make it even more unconventional, but in order to fill the 'speech bubble' coming from my model, I will be needing the album title to fill the bottom line, as "Renegades" simply won't fill up the two lines for obvious reasons.


The above picture is an example of Russian Constructivism. This particular style influenced Franz Ferdinand's front cover, as it will with my overall style. I will go in to more detail later about Russian Constructivism, as I will be researching it more, as it will be a lage part of my ancillary texts.



The above image is the aforementioned panel of the digipak album 'The Best In Town' in which the band say their thanks, in a humorous way, behind the CD and the plastic covering. This is something I will be aiming to achieve on my digipak.


Taken from the same digipak album, the above image is one of the inside panels, situated next to the panel holding the CD in place. I will be influenced by this in the sense that it will have hand-written qualities, similar to my back cover, and will have lyrics taken from the songs on the album (to make up for the lack of lyrics in a booklet, which my digipak won't have (although some do in a slipcase)).

This changing of my ideas of my digipak has lead me to re-do my designs. I will be scanning in the images and uploading them on here when we come back from the holidays.

On a different note, I have decided that I will be using the idea of doing the lyric boards, in my music video, backwards, and so when they are played in reverse, they will be flying toward the lead singer, who is holding the boards, and will be in the correct order also. Furthermore, my CD design will be of a simple Vinyl record, shown below.


Conventionally, the album name and artist name are written on the CD. Because my CD will be in the style of a Vinyl record, I will place some stickers on it, hand-written (and scanned on to the computer to be edited on) which will state the aforementioned vital information, allowing me to abide by the conventions in a 'scruffy' way, giving my CD homemade qualities, as though the disc is like a 'mixtape' were people wrote the name of the album/artist on the tape, usually messily, on a sticker; attaching it to the tape, or in this case CD.

Friday 17 December 2010

First Draft Edit - Whole Music Video:


Above is my original music video, before I decided to re-shoot and re-edit my music video in the style of Russian Constructivism.

The main reasons why I have decided to re-shoot this, aside from the new visual idea of Russian Constructivism, are as follows:


  •  It looked unprofessional
  • The flashing colours used are unconventional of a rock/indie music video
  • the beginning wasn't catchy enough - the beginning needs to catch the audience's attention straight away, or they may end up turning the channel over, or (if consuming the product on YouTube, for example) they may end up clicking off the URL.
  • The beginning also looked awful, in general, such as the camera shake, which was intended, but turned out to look awful.
  • The contrast between the lead singer and the backgrounds is too great, and it's too obvious that a green screen has been used, which detaches the audience from focussing and getting fully involved in the video, because it is too obvious that it's a music video - badly done, however.
  • Background where irrelevant/had no meaning. I used college grounds for some backgrounds, which meant that not much  effort was put in to my music video, and even the front of a Tesco shop, which was meant to highlight the music video as being intentionally care-free, by using stupid backgrounds, but it seemed more like a 'product placement' of sorts, by advertising Tesco.
  • At 01:14 I made an attempt to make the background have a meaning, by having other 'band members' (fictional) act out the 'light tickle' lyric board. However, because of the angles used in the two shots (drastically different), it looked odd, unreal and needed to be cut, if I was to use this version at all.
  • At 01:30 I decided to have the lead singer walk in to shot, in the background, even though he's in the foreground doing the lyric boards. I liked the concept of this, but I could have expanded on the idea. However, it seemed irrelevant to the music video (except for self-reflexivity) as it only happens the once, which is why this scene also wouldn't be in my final cut, no matter how good the concept is, the final idea wasn't developed enough.
  • For an entire minute of the music video, the lead singer eats a bag of Skittles. This was done on purpose, to denote a 'music video gone wrong' (production team had messed up by not doing enough lyric boards). However, the final product looked as though I had just ran out of ideas, and got Billy to eat some sweets, which wasn't the case.
I will be re-doing my music video from scratch, perhaps re-shooting the lyric board sequence, also.

Friday 10 December 2010

Rushes 1:

I will be re-shooting my music video today. Some shots that I have already taken will be used again, or re-shot as well.

Monday 6 December 2010

Rough Shooting Script:

Also, whilst I was snowed in to my home, I came up with a rough shooting script. This allowed me to gather my thoughts and ideas, and put them in the context of my song and music video. This is shown Below. Furthermore, a storyboard is now in production, which will make my ideas even more clearer to me, as well as you.



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Mind Map/Update:

For the past five days, it has snowed heavily, forcing college to shut. This may seem like it would be a hindrence to my work, but it did give me time to evaluate my music video, and think of ideas, as it became clear that it simply wasn't that good. After watching 'The Morgana Show', I came up with the idea of the same thing, except using cuts, instead of one continuous shot. My ideas are below in a mind map form.


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